Apparently, there will be two teams competing under Brendan's chairmanship. Each team will be captained by one of the cast (on a rotating basis) from Mrs Brown's Boys and the team members will be chosen from the audience.

Brendan O'Carroll is a very special comedian indeed. You can put him into a sitcom which, on paper, lacks almost every ingredient required to succeed and it will turn into solid gold (if the purity of comedy gold can be measured by the size of the audience it attracts and how much that audience say they love it).

I wasn't surprised, therefore, when he was put into a panel show which, on paper, should struggle to attract any sort of audience even in the middle of the afternoon yet which the BBC had decided to broadcast in a prime-time post-watershed slot.

Having just watched the first episode, I wouldn't be surprised if he was about to pull it off (Ooooh, missus!) again.

I didn't say it lacked components shared by Britain's most popular ever sitcoms. I said it lacked almost every ingredient essential for success.

If we think about a house constructed in typical fashion by Laurel and Hardy, as it collapses about their ears we cannot but acknowledge that it includes a great many components shared by almost every successfully-built and enduring house in the civilised world.

The reason for its failure, however, is not what was put into its construction but rather what wasn't.